Driving licence of repeated offenders to get cancelled

New Delhi: After losing his Cabinet colleague and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Gopinath Munde to a tragic road accident in the national capital, Road and Surface Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari is planning to bring some major fundamental changes in the laws related to transportation in the country.

In a first such move in this regard, a new Motor Vehicle Act would be brought into effect. In the next step, a system of issuing automatic challans to the traffic violators will be introduced in the cities having population of more than 10 lakh apart from installing CCTVs and vehicle tracking system at every zebra crossing.

In the third phase, in order to compel the vehicle manufacturers to bring modifications in the engines and body, changes will be introduced in the body codes of trucks and buses.

Talking about bringing changes in design of truck and bus bodies, Gadkari said that some trucks are so elevated that small cars can even get underneath and due to this very reason, the manufacturers will be asked to bring changes in the design.

During a meeting on Thursday, Gadkari discussed the issues related to road safety and related laws with the officials of his ministry. Later, he came out with some important announcements in this regard during a press conference.

“The present road safety laws proved toothless in dealing effectively with accidents. That’s why, new laws matching international standards should come up, which would be abided by the people. That’s why it has been decided to bring a new Motor Vehicles Act. Road safety laws in USA, Canada, Singapore, Germany, Japan and Britain will be studied and a draft will be prepared on the basis of that,” said Gadkari.

Gadkari also said that a meeting of National Road Safety Council will be called and the issue will be discussed with the states. After getting approval from the Union Cabinet, it would be presented in the Parliament for passage.

On being asked that such claims have been made previously as well, Gadkari said, “Let’s forget about the past. We are not in sync with the archaic laws. When licence will be cancelled forever after four offences, people will fall in line. No one – ministers, MPs, MLAs, journalists- will be exempted. Usage of seat-belts on rear seat was also made mandatory in 2002 but no one follows that.”

He also asked the RTO and NHAI authorities to identify the accident-prone areas and present a report on it.